The present disclosure relates generally to forwarding calls between endpoint devices, and, more particularly, to doing so in a manner that facilitates communication when both parties are available.
IP telephony allows various devices, often referred to as end-points, such as dedicated IP phones or specially configured personal computers, to initiate and receive telephone calls over the Internet or private data networks. Generally, the voice signal is compressed and translated into IP packets for transmission over the network(s).
IP telephony offers many benefits to both carriers and users that have contributed to its rapid deployment. Eventually, IP telephony technologies may replace traditional circuit switched telephony technologies, such as the Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN). In the meantime, however, there is a substantial installed base of traditional telephone systems served by the PSTN and IP telephony must co-exist with traditional telephone systems.
A number of products are available that allow enterprises to integrate their traditional telephone systems, such as private branch exchange (PBX) switches with IP telephony features. The IP Office™ product, commercially available from Avaya, Inc., of Basking Ridge, N.J., supports voice and data communications. IP Office™ can be set up as a traditional PBX, an IP telephony server, or a combination of both. Thus, the IP Office™ product allows an enterprise to immediately implement traditional telephony, and evolve to IP over time, or to immediately implement a full IP solution.
Within this environment, there can be certain types of calls between colleagues in which the caller may not be sure how busy the called party is when making the call. This type of call may not be urgent and is only desired by the calling party if the called party happens to be available and willing to talk about a particular subject. Some communication channel other than a voice call, or even a voice call, can be used to ask the called party if they are available and, if not, then the called party is asked to call back when they are free. The called party when calling back may do so at a time that the original calling party is no longer available. This scenario is different than automatic callbacks request functionality already provided in many PBX systems. In those scenarios, the caller needs a callback when the called party is free regardless of the original caller's availability. Automatic callbacks merely check the availability of both phones of both the called party and the caller party to facilitate the callback.
While a presence server can provide an indication of how busy the called party is if they are presently communicating over one or more online channels, it does not provide any indication of busy the called party is doing offline tasks. Thus, there remains a need to provide communications that take into account both the called party's current availability and the time a caller is available to receive a callback.